Cold Restart
Twilight coughed and spluttered her way to consciousness. She was lying prone in a shallow pool of cold water which had started to rise to the level of her mouth and nose. She quickly scrambled to her hooves, and equally quickly regretted it. Her entire body was one big variety show of pain, though her legs and forehead were the highlights. She swayed, and carefully picked her way to the edge of the pool, which appeared to be at the bottom of a crater.
It was a newly created crater, from the look of it. Ripples and rills in the walls were still steaming, and rivulets of water trickled down and over them in a thousand tiny waterfalls. The sky overhead was slate grey with clouds no pegasus had placed there, and around the rim of the crater, just above her head, clumps of snow and ice only emphasised the fact that the air around her was very cold.
The cold air actually helped in a way, numbing some of the less intense pains in her body. She reached a small ledge in the crater wall that looked as if it would remain above water level for the moment and sagged down carefully onto it. The ground was cold under her barrel, but not as cold as she’d expected, and solid enough to support her without squelching.
She tried to take stock of things. There had been the wedding, and her rage, and the feeling of her horn sinking into… she retched, it had been like the rind of an orange, resisting for a moment before giving way and allowing her horn to drive into the softer parts underneath. Fortunately, between her eagerness to discover ‘Cadence’s’ secret and her race through the mines, she’d had nothing to eat recently, so there was nothing in her stomach to bring up.
The flash and power, so much power flooding into her horn it burned. She’d felt the need to escape, and instinctively formed a teleport spell matrix in her mind, just before it was overwhelmed by the tidal wave of magic. She hadn’t envisaged a destination, other than somewhere cold to leach away the heat. It was easy to deduce what had happened, the wave of energy had sunk into the matrix and empowered it, overpowered it, which meant she was lucky to be alive.
There were quite a few horror stories floating around about unstable teleport spells. Being turned inside out or reduced to a fine red mist were some of the _less_ gruesome ones. However, she’d apparently been flung many times her normal teleport range… she noticed the crater was asymmetric, with a shallower ‘tail’ heading off in one direction, so either with a significant north or southwards component, as without conscious effort the spell wouldn’t have adjusted for the velocity change due to the change in latitude.
It must have absorbed just enough magic to stop her from exploding outright, and the rest of the magical energy had coalesced within her and around her, being drawn away in the teleport. When she’d rematerialized, it had remained with her, forming both a shield and toughening her body so that when she hit she’d dug a furrow rather than simply smearing herself over the landscape. The corona effect releasing its stored energy would have been quite enough to blast the crater she now found herself in.
She shivered and instinctively tried to cast a warming charm. The pain in her forehead redoubled and she gasped, almost blacking out. It took a moment for her to recover, but when she did, she shifted position to look down at a pool of water that had formed in front of her. Lit by the grey sky above, it worked as a mirror, and showed her what she feared.
Her mane was frazzled and her face sooty, but it was her horn that took her attention, or what was left of it. The lower part was blackened and scarred, the purple velvet covering it showing missing patches, but the top half was gone, a cauterised scab covering it. The ache in her forehead redoubled at the sight, along with a renewed need to throw up.
Unicorn horns weren’t made of keratin or cartilage, they were a hollow spiral shell of magically conductive and hardened bone, the outer surface covered by a velvet left over from the growth process. The inner surface of the spiral was lined with honey-combing that added strength and supported the specialised nerve cells that converted the thaumic energy generated by the unicorn’s body into directed spell effects. Nerves came from them to join in a trunk that ran down the horn and terminated in the gap between the two frontal lobes, connecting deeply into the left and right brain. It even had its own dedicated blood supply, the corneal artery, running down the centre.
In short a unicorn horn was a precision instrument, a ganglion of the brain, and the top half of hers had been amputated, or more properly vapourised, by the massive overload. At least the damage had cauterised the stump, while horn injuries were vanishingly rare, it was entirely possible for a unicorn to bleed out from a damaged horn. What was left was undoubtedly suffering from massive mana burn, meaning attempting to form spells would be agonising and might cause further damage.
The only good news was that it could regenerate and grow back. Rest would heal the mana burn in days, up to a week, and the velvet that normally covered the horn was what built it in the first place. Unlike cervines, who had velvet that died and peeled off when their antlers matured, a unicorn’s velvet lasted as long as she did. But the process would take months, maybe a year, even in ideal conditions, which this was not, and it was uncertain if she’d ever regain her full power.
Twilight tore herself away from her realisation that she had no more magic than a donkey, to the more immediate realisation that she’d soon be a frozen dead donkey if she didn’t find shelter and warmth, then food in that order (she’d read plenty of survival guides). Considering the conditions, at least water wasn’t going to be a problem.
Slowly, she got up and forced her aching body to walk up the shallow gradient of her crash landing. The view wasn’t any better outside the hole than in, a vast snowy plane with a slate grey sky and dark mountains in the middle distance. The wind, which had been muted in the hollow, struck her with full force, and she shivered. She was somewhere in the northern wastes, she decided, which meant her landing furrow pointed due west.
Looking around, she spotted a set of smaller outcroppings of dark stone to the south west, sheltering a few low lying and scraggly evergreens that would only be called trees by the most sympathetic of arborists. The sharp edged forms suggested hard rock, which meant fissures that might do as shelter, and pine needles were edible, barely. She set herself to face it and started walking, trying to ignore the icy wind blowing across her body.
At least it numbed the aches of her body and head, but that only left a gap into which her thoughts tumbled. As she placed one hoof in front of another, she kept on cycling back to the events in the throne room. She’d charged at Chrysalis with rage in her heart, her strength and magic turned to one end, doing as much damage as possible. The shudder that ran through her had nothing to do with the wind.
Twilight had never deliberately hurt another living being before now. Nightmare Moon had been a shadow cast over Luna’s mind, and Discord had simply been re-imprisoned. But what she’d done to Chrysalis had been personal, visceral, and now she was able to look back on it, horrifying. Considering the level of energy release, it was unlikely that Chrysalis had survived the blast. She prayed with all her heart that it hadn’t hurt anyone else. Fortunately, if her calculations were correct, her body would have blocked the blast wave towards the spectators.
Maybe her ruined horn was some sort of punishment for allowing herself to lose herself in that madness, as was her banishment. She didn’t even know if her actions had actually made a difference. With their queen destroyed, would the other changelings have fled, or just sought revenge? She could only hope that if they had, that Celestia, Luna and her friends would be equal to the task of fending them off.
Part of her wondered why she didn’t just lie down and let the cold claim her. She’d lost everything that mattered, even if she somehow returned to Canterlot, her friends had seen what she’d done, what she’d become. How could they ever look at her again without seeing the murderous figure who’d killed Chrysalis? As for Princess Celestia, considering her response to Twilight’s casting of the ‘Need-it-Want-it’ spell the last time Twilight went out of control…
No, better that she never returned than have her friends fear her, her mentor be forced to punish her for her crimes. It was not like getting back to Equestria looked to be on the cards in her near future anyway.
Still she kept walking. Even with everything, she didn’t want to die, and she didn’t want to just give up. The two times in her life she’d gotten to the point of giving up on something, some outside force had rescued her, the Rainboom when she was trying to hatch Spike’s egg, and Celestia sending her the Friendship letters during Discord’s attack. It would be too much to expect a third save. Besides, giving up was the easy route. She would survive, and find a way to make amends, or rather find a way to balance the scales.
At least with any luck, her friends and family were safe. That was worth everything that had happened to her and anything that would in the future. The upthrust rocks loomed in front of her, and as she searched for a cave, she composed a letter she’d probably never deliver.
“Dear Princess Celestia.
Today I learned that feeling you’ve failed your friends can make you do things you wouldn’t normally think of. Things you know are wrong and horrible. Actions done in the heat of the moment will affect you for the rest of your life. The worst part is I know I’d do it again, to protect my friends, my brother and you. The hope that you all are safe is the only consolation.
My crimes may have forever alienated me from my friends, but I still care for them, and you, deeply. In honour of those feelings, I will find a way to carry on, to find some way to make recompense for my actions. I cannot go back, so I must go forward, and hope that in that unknown future I will find a way to make amends, both for my failure to stop the situation before it became critical, and my actions afterwards. Maybe one day I can even make peace with myself.
Your ex-student,
Twilight Sparkle.”
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For whatever reason (probably the wording of the description), I was expecting this to be a short-story collection of different people giving the speech. I'm not sure how I felt when it continued and Twilight wasn't dead. I still like this, though. In particular, I commend you for accounting for velocity change due to change in latitude. (Change in longitude would also produce a change, but it's believable that her longitude hasn't changed much - assuming you're going to write what I think you're going to.)
I've loved everything of yours I've ever read, but since every single one of those stories was abandoned, I can't say I want to start this one, just because it's likely to be abandoned as well, which is a huge shame. You're a great author.
This seems interesting...
It is nice to read a story taking into account physics. I once wrote a blogpost about the physics of UnicornTeleportation.
why do i get the sneaking suspision that every pony at that reception heard that
I like it :) Looking forward to more.
Here, just so you know- _Doing this_ doesn't italicize anything in an HTML format document like this. You need to use the tags instead
Please continue writing besides a few mistakes this story has been wonderful so far!
Oh come on, Chryssie dies but Twilight survives? There goes my drive to read this to the end, though the fact that Chryssie is listed as a main character gives me hope that she might survive.
If not, then I'm kinda going Twilight dies too.
Cya
Raziel-chan
Functionally an earth pony? At least earth ponies have the race of their tribe. Like endurance, something non-negligible given she's in that frozen landscape.
Twilight is functionally a no-race pony.
Ah, you forget, Twilight: three is a magic number.
Also, if I'm ever mortally wounded, I'm going to have to remember to start giving an evil monologue in order to stave off death until the paramedics arrive.
Not criticizing, it's just a funny cliche. :)
I really like it.
Thank you.
Aww...
Still, great story so far.
A superior take on the Alternate Canterlot Wedding where the characters are called out.
This is great. I agree; this is much more in character than the stereotypical Twilight-telling-everypony-else-off story. Besides, she doesn't need to do that now; their own consciences would do it for her. (I doubt Chrysalis even needed to spell everything out; I guess she just liked monologuing?)
Please, please, continue!
Well, forget my previous comment.
Ha, nope! You're less than an earth pony. At least earth ponies have their own passive form of magic!
Considering where you are, and when, and the propensity of evil to desire apprentices...
No, I don't think it's too much to expect at all.
6837602 You are right. Maybe I should change that to donkey.
6799550 The way that I might see it is that some part of Chrysalis had somehow got infused into Twilight... That or she has endless nightmares of her causing torment each and every night.
6838702 6799550
Pieces of the consciousnesses of previous queens might linger in the hive mind. Chrysalis might either be one of these, or the Chrysalis tag might represent the aggregate consciousness of said queens, of which Chrysalis is now a component.
6840890 I kinda thought of another way it could go. If anyone remembers the original Teen Titans, it could be like the episode in season three where Robin has hallucinations of Slade still alive and causing physical and/or mental strife. God I miss that show.
So much potential. I love it. I can't wait to read more and see what happens next. With the mentioning that the horn was hollow with a honeycomb structure I am curious if any fluid from impaling Crysallis sunk in to eventually effect her or if the cauterization prevented that. Either way I love this explanation of how a unicorn's horn works. This is a good story.
Really unique and well thought take on the usual 'exiled Twilight' fics.
Very well done and completely in character, great work.
It could've ended here, but I'm glad it didn't!
6836669
It dampens things quiet a bit when you realize you've something awful on your own. It's much easier to say something along the lines of 'I've learned through my mistakes and I won't do it again.' When you're so far gone or so full of yourself that someone close to you has to tell you what a monster you've become, it only intensifies the guilt you feel. I can't imagine what having another monster who luxuriates the pain she causes, a monster you sided with when someone who loved you needed you the most, would do to a person. I think that's why Chrysalis monologued so hard.
I wonder if Chrysalis knew that Twilight was still alive? I mean, she had a 50/50 chance of being sent into the ocean. This would've been a much shorter story if that had happened.
Hmm, so she wakes up and things have gotten interesting pretty fast. You know what this reminds me of?